'Old' EU Member States Attract 20% of Bulgarian Youth

At the end of 2009, one in five young Bulgarians was willing to migrate to an 'older' and more economically stable EU Member State for a period longer than five years.

The data is from the paper 'Migration strategies of the crisis-stricken youth in an enlarged European Union' of the Central European Labor Studies Institute (CELSI). The survey studies the migration response of the youth from new EU member states to disparate conditions in an enlarged European Union at the onset of the Great Recession.

The paper was based on Eurobarometer data in order to identify the keydrivers of the intention to work in another member state of European Economic Area (EEA) and their expected duration.

According to the corresponding author Martin Kahanec, the migration intentions are high among those not married and among males with children, but both categories are also overrepresented among people with only temporary as opposed to long-term or permanent migration plans. Whereas age affects migration intentions negatively, education has no effect on whether working abroad is envisaged. However, conditional on envisaging to work abroad, completion of education is associated with long-term (at least five years), but not permanent, migration plans.

Migrants consider temporary migration from new to old member states an opportunity to improve their standard of living. The better social, economic and political conditions in the countries of Western Europe are among the major factors that attract migrants. According to the study, the social welfare and the health care are not relevant to people intending to live abroad temporarily and are relatively unimportant for those who plan to reside in a foreign country permanently.

Socio-demographic variables explain about as much variation of migration intentions as self-reported push and pull factors and migration constraints, the survey concludes.